I’m having trouble seeing the unfairness of giving someone the existing price, as long as their subscription hasn’t expired yet (or has just expired).
There is no functional difference to whether auto-renew was on or off, as long as they renew and stay subscribed on an ongoing basis.
From a customer retention / churn perspective, loss aversion is an effective tool. It is entirely possible that a customer paying the discounted rate is actually more valuable (on a lifetime basis) than if you can manage to get one year out of them at full price before they reconsider.
Not sure what direction Trakt wants to go, but for my part, I only barely use VIP features and wouldn’t miss them. I could do without Trakt completely, really. I’ve paid because I like the product, and paying money is a good way to encourage them to keep it going.
How did you respond to their message? I mean at least to me it sounds like a final verdict. On my part, as I was so dumbfounded I just replied „Thank you“
Not allowing an ‘active’ VIP to renew at their original price because auto-subscription issues outright goes against everything Justin stated in this thread.
If this is truly the case, I will not be renewing VIP and will ditch the service. I refuse to support an app that lies or reverses positions, for financial gain.
Like Dave, I barely use any of the VIP features. I don’t need VIP, I just wanted to support the devs like most other VIPs. Reward loyal customers; even ‘big evil corps’ do it.
If new subscriptions are declining due to the price increase, reconsider the hike and its justification for the added value, rather than burdening existing members.
I don’t quite understand why Trakt is making a difference between users having auto-renewal on or off.
To me they are basically saying:„This user has auto-renew on the whole year, so he will pay the old price“ vs.
„This user has an active subscription, but cancelled auto-renew, so we treat him as if he was a new user, should he try to re-enable auto-renew again, even before his sub expires“.
In my opinion, whether a user has auto-renew on or off only matters on one occasion: when the subscription is up for payment.
If the sub has expired, fine, treat the user as if he was new, but maybe allow a grace period of one or two weeks where he still has the chance to get the old price.
The way I see it, having the old price “locked” is an exclusive benefit for those who were actively keeping their auto-renewal option turned on. Writing to support would come in place in case something happens to the billing process (credit card expired, not enough funds and so on), so they can put you back on your old tariff.
If I’m understanding Michael, he did contact support and they denied his current rate because he did not have auto-renewal on.
Auto Renewal vs Manual Renewal should not factor into whether one’s rate is grandfathered. Some people simply have a preference to handle subs manually, whether it’s for better expense tracking or because they don’t like storing saved credit cards.
There’s enough existing members, that Trakt should address this programmatically on the renewal page.
My subscription is going to be renewed on December 16th. Of course I disabled the auto renewal, 12 month ago, after the payment, as I always do for EVERY single service I’m using (Qobuz, Tidal, TV+, 1Password, Roon and so on). So, what’s the point to increase my price from 30 to 60 USD? I’was going to renew… but now… no thanks. Please, reconsider. @justin I’ve never received any communication about this “offer”: <<You can still lock in the $30/yr price by signing up for yearly billing by September 5. After that, it will be $60/yr.>>.
I also won’t be renewing when my current subscription expires in January if Trakt won’t grandfather the price just because I turned off auto-renewal. I’ll contact support just before expiry to see if Trakt will honor the original subscription price of $30. But based on what I’m reading in this thread I’m not optimistic that the outcome will be positive.
I was looking into auto scrobbling, realized I needed VIP for that to work and finally landed here after wondering about the 6,99€/mo price tag. Like, is there a streaming service with tons of content included? Trakt is awesome and I’m absolutely willing to pay for the service, but the price is very high, certainly too high for my poor ass at the moment. Maybe different VIP/premium tiers with different feature sets would be an idea for the future.
Justin’s response from September 2 that is marked as the solution to this question thread: “As long as you remain an active VIP, you’re grandfathered in at your price point. If you have issue or a failed renewal, just contact support and we will honor the price.” But at at least two members have posted in this thread that when they contacted support they were denied renewal at the grandfathered price because auto-renewal had been turned off. I went back through the terms and conditions of my subscription and I could not find anywhere where it was stated that auto-renewal needed to remain active in order to qualify for this perk.
And then I found this post which clearly states that the original pricing will be honored even if the subscription is cancelled and renewed (i.e. auto-renewal is turned off and then turned back on):
I will be submitting my personal request later tonight. My expiry date isn’t until January 14. I would not have even known that this was something I needed to be concerned about if I hadn’t logged in to the forum to find out if Trakt was down for others last night. This post about Price of VIP was at the top of the list, so I clicked on it out of curiosity. After reading through the thread I was not amused.
I’ll post back when I get an official response. But based on both atrs Angel’s and Michael Roesch’s requests to maintain the grandfathered price being rejected on account of turning off auto-renewal I’m not optimistic that I will receive a positive response.
Keep in mind that “no response” is not necessarily a bad thing.
If there is reason to believe there is confusion, a rep could easily decide to put the ticket on hold while they get some clarification (or possibly even while decisions are discussed and a policy change enacted).
that is not true, i contacted them i got the “you don’t have auto-renewal”, and if i’m not mistaken my auto-renewal was cancelled because of CC expiring
I am exactly the same when it comes to subscriptions. Its simple tho, if they dont honour the existing price when mines due to expire next year I wont be renewing.
